Price
Both apps require a Creative Cloud subscription, meaning you can’t buy a one-time license for them as with some Photoshop alternatives. The two apps have an identical price, currently $22.99 per month with an annual commitment.
A slightly cheaper way to get Photoshop is available, however. The Photography plan ($19.99-per-month, billed annually) includes it, along with both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom. If you subscribe to the full Creative Cloud suite ($54.99 per month, billed annually), you get all of Adobe’s creative apps, including Premiere Pro for video editing and InDesign for layout design. You have to scroll almost to the bottom of Adobe’s pricing page to see this option. The Creative Cloud Pro choice ($69.99 per month, billed annually) adds a significant number of AI credits. All of the plans I mentioned come with just 100GB of cloud storage, save for the Photography plan, which gets you 1TB.
Adobe Illustrator (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
Businesses pay more, with individual apps and the full suite, respectively, going for $37.99 and a cool $99.99 per month (billed annually). These plans come with 1TB of cloud storage, 24/7 tech support, and an administrative console for managing multiple installations. Meanwhile, students and teachers can get the full Creative Cloud Pro subscription and 100GB of storage for $39.99 per month (billed annually).
With any plan, you can run the programs simultaneously on a maximum of two computers. If you install either on a third, you have to de-authorize a previous installation.
Adobe Photoshop (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
Are the price of these Adobe products competitive? Illustrator’s main rival, CorelDraw, costs $549 for a perpetual license or $269 per year. Affinity offers bargain alternatives to both applications, with Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo each going for a one-time fee of $69.99. Other Photoshop competitors include Capture One ($189 per year, or $317 for a standalone license), which squarely targets professional photographers. DxO PhotoLab is another Photoshop competitor; it charges a one-time fee of $229.99 and features strong camera- and lens-based corrections. Another Photoshop competitor with some unique AI editing tools is Skylum Luminar, which costs $239 for a perpetual license. Finally, CyberLink makes the full-featured Photoshop competitor, PhotoDirector ($64.99 per year, or $99.99 for a perpetual license).
System Requirements
All of the Creative Cloud applications fully support macOS (12 or later) and Windows (10 22H2 or 11 22H2 or later). They’re compatible with both platforms’ Arm version, meaning Apple silicon and Arm-based Windows PCs. For both apps, you need a minimum of 8GB of RAM. Illustrator requires a minimum of 3GB of hard drive space, while Photoshop demands 10GB. In terms of graphics hardware, Illustrator needs 1GB of VRAM (it recommends 4GB) and OpenGL version 4.0 or later, while Photoshop requires 1.5GB of VRAM and DirectX 12 support. Both programs require an internet connection for Adobe to verify your account, as well as a monitor with a resolution of at least 1,024 by 768 pixels.
File Support
Both programs work with many different image formats. However, Illustrator is primarily for editing vector images, while Photoshop concerns itself with perfecting raster images. What’s the difference? Path instructions describe vector images, while a set of dots comprises raster images.
Both programs can technically open either file type, but what matters more is what they can actually do with them. Illustrator can do a whole lot more with vectors, and the same holds true for Photoshop and rasters, aka bitmaps. As such, Illustrator’s bread and butter are vector files in the AI (native) and SVG formats, while Photoshop works best with JPG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD (native) formats.
A big advantage of vector images is that you can enlarge them infinitely without distortion. If you greatly enlarge a raster image, by contrast, you end up with a highly pixelated result. This makes vectors eminently suitable for posters or other large-scale jobs. Another plus for vectors is that you can reshape, move, or resize components of an image without losing fidelity.
Here’s an example of a photo (bitmap/raster) that Illustrator converted into a vector image. It’s one of several Image Trace options, some of which maintain more fidelity to the original photos, but it shows the basic difference between raster and vector images.
Left to right: Before and after converting a bitmap to a vector in Adobe Illustrator (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
Interface and Ease of Use
Both programs sport an intuitive, state-of-the-art, and visually similar interface, which is impressive considering the vast number of editing tools they encompass. Each has a clear starting point on its home screen, making it easy to open a file or create a new one based on a template or from scratch. Both apps let you have multiple image documents open at once, letting you see them in separate windows or inside the main application window. They also have extensive help features, with a persistent search icon (a magnifying glass) at the top from which you can find answers at any time. Finally, both offer several layout options (or workspaces) for different tasks. For example, Illustrator has Layout and Typography workspaces, while Photoshop has Painting and Photography workspaces.
Image Editing
Illustrator’s editing tools focus on graphic design work and vector images. That means you get more tools for shapes, a greater number of pen options, mesh tools, and granular typography tools. And Illustrator’s Blend tool lets you combine multiple shapes and objects. Logo designers, among others, are much better off with Illustrator than Photoshop for these reasons.
Photoshop’s editing tools include photo adjustments like curves, deep color grading, exposure, and levels. It’s also famous for filter effects that can give an image a retro or psychedelic look or blur it. Photoshop is what you should use for photo retouching, such as blemish removal or skin smoothing. Photoshop can correct camera and lens distortions such as chromatic aberration and image noise, as well.
Get Our Best Stories!
All the Latest Tech, Tested by Our Experts
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
The apps share some similarities, however. Both offer artboards (multiple images within one canvas), brushes, cropping, drawing, gradients, layers, selection, shapes, and text tools. Note that the brushes in Illustrator create vector art, while those in Photoshop create raster art.
For extra functionality, both in editing and importing and exporting, both programs support plug-ins. Illustrator calls these extensions. Check out our favorite Photoshop plug-ins for some ideas about what’s available. It’s also possible to use automated actions and scripts in each.
Recommended by Our Editors
Layers
Both apps support layers. In other words, you can overlay image content or effects. Think of them like a stack of pancakes, in which you see only what’s on the top layer—unless that layer has some transparency. You layer on the effects in the order you want them to appear. You need to stick with the programs’ native file formats (AI for Illustrator, PSD for Photoshop) to maintain layers. It’s possible to flatten layers (collapse them into one image layer) in both apps, but that means you lose the ability to edit on a per-layer basis.
Photo Editing
Photo editing is clearly the domain of Photoshop. Why? One major reason is that photographs are raster images rather than vectors. Another reason, especially for professionals, is that Photoshop can work with raw camera files, which affords far more correction possibilities. For example, increasing the exposure of a non-raw file, such as a JPG, makes everything brighter at the expense of detail in some places. With a raw file, you can increase the brightness without affecting detail by reducing highlights or bringing up the shadows. I’ve started with completely dark raw files and boosted the exposure to the point in which they became usable. If you try to open a raw camera file in Illustrator, you get a message that it isn’t readable.
AI Features
Both applications let you generate images based on text prompts and have Generative Expand tools for existing images. Illustrator generates or expands vector images, while Photoshop does so for raster images. Photoshop also includes a whole section of AI-powered Neural Filters, for things like automatic retouching and colorizing black and white photos. Its AI tools can also detect and select a photo’s subject, remove and replace an object or extraneous person, and upscale a low-resolution photo.
It costs AI credits to generate AI content in either app. One generation typically consumes one AI credit. You get a different number of credits at each subscription level. For individuals, a single-app plan comes with 25 credits per month, the Creative Cloud Standard plan offers the same, and the Creative Cloud Pro tier (even the Student and Teacher versions) includes a whopping 4,000 credits per month. You can read all the gory details about how many credits each operation burns up and how many each plan gets on Adobe’s AI Credits FAQ.
Export Options
The output options between the two programs differ significantly. Illustrator can output to vector formats, such as AI, EPS, and SVG, as well as to common raster formats. Photoshop exports only to raster formats, but it covers a lot of them, including BMP, GIF (including animated GIF), JPG, PNG, and WebP (via a plug-in). Both can export to PDF. Note that some options in both programs are available in the Save as… menu rather than in the Export menu. Both programs have strong support for outputting to professional printing services, with capabilities like soft-proofing, CMYK, and color management.
Collaboration
Both Illustrator and Photoshop support Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries, which help you collect project resources for sharing, and offer the Share for Review feature, which allows synced commenting. An even more powerful option is Invite to Edit, which, like it sounds, lets others collaborate in the editing process. Understandably, this works only with images that you save to Creative Cloud online storage.
Should You Use Illustrator or Photoshop?
Although they both work with images and have several overlapping features, the names of Adobe’s image editing products provide a strong clue as to who should use which. If you’re a designer working on illustrations—particularly those that include drawings, logos, and text—choose Illustrator. It’s also the best choice if your output requirements include printing at a large scale, such as posters. If you’re a photographer or a designer who works with photographic images—adding effects, correcting lighting and color, and retouching—Photoshop is your best bet.
